In Mexico's Murders, Fury Is Aimed at Officials

By GINGER THOMPSON

Published: September 26, 2005

V?or Javier Garc?still has a dozen marks across his abdomen and genitals from the burning cigarettes the police used to torture him into falsely confessing to being a serial killer.

It made no difference to a lower court judge that the DNA tests on the bodies identified as his victims were not conclusive. Or that a forensics expert testified that he had been ordered by his superiors to plant false evidence. Or even that witnesses retracted their testimony, saying the police had threatened them into making false statements.

Mr. Garc?was sentenced to 50 years anyway.

The State Supreme Court of Chihuahua threw the case out in June and set Mr. Garc?free, but only after three and a half years in prison, during which he lost his business, his savings and his wife to another man.

''Imagine it,'' he said in an interview, choking back tears. ''Everywhere she went, people looked at her like she was married to a terrible criminal, when the real criminals were outside. They still are.''

Troubling as it is, Mr. Garc?s case is not isolated. International observers, human rights workers and federal authorities say it illustrates a disturbing pattern of malfeasance by state law enforcement authorities responsible for investigating Mexico's most gruesome murder mystery: the deaths of more than 350 women in this border area over the last decade, including at least 90 raped and killed in similar ways.

Whether through incompetence, corruption or a lurid connection to the killings, the bungling and cover-ups are so extensive, federal investigators say, that the police and other officials have themselves become suspected of links to the crimes.

''The question I and so many other people have,'' said Guadalupe Morf? President Vicente Fox's special envoy to Ciudad Ju?z, ''is why did the authorities go to such lengths to fabricate cases? Maybe it was because of incompetence. Or maybe it was because they didn't want to be exposed.''

In a quiet but notable shift, a new set of state officials has taken steps to right past wrongs by reviewing and reopening more than 100 cases. They have called in a team of Argentine forensic experts to exhume unidentified bodies and retrieve others stored in state morgues for DNA tests. The overturning of Mr. Garc?s case, too, is part of a new determination by some courts to scrutinize evidence more carefully.

But virtually all agree that the problems swirling around the investigations are profound and far from fixed.

Senior officials appointed by Mr. Fox two years ago to review the cases have charged that state authorities played down killings, failed to start searches for missing women in time to rescue them, covered up or falsified crucial evidence, and tortured suspects into confessions.

Their actions, the officials said, were meant not only to fend off a public relations nightmare as international pressure grew, but also to protect those many suspected of being behind the killings, including corrupt police officials, powerful drug traffickers and other organized gangs.

Critics of the state say the cover-ups have created a second cycle of injustice and have set the investigations back for years. The government has created a $30 million fund for the families of the dead, and there is some public sentiment that the falsely accused should receive some of it. But for now, they have little recourse, even in the courts.

In the meantime, there are growing signs that the serial-style killings have spread to other cities, like Chihuahua, 200 miles along the border; Toluca, a suburb of Mexico City; the Gulf Coast capital of Veracruz; and Tuxtla Guti?ez in the southern state of Chiapas. Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca says he is considering creating a special prosecutor's office to investigate.

Whether justice can be found in Ciudad Ju?z, where the killings began, has become an important test of Mexico's efforts to establish a rule of law, human rights and law enforcement authorities say.

Ciudad Ju?z, an industrial capital of some 1.3 million people, has won the dishonor of being Mexico's most violent city. It remains in the grip of organized crime, especially drug traffickers and prostitution rings that have cover from corrupt authorities, federal officials say.

Women and girls continue to disappear and suffer violent deaths here at a rate more than twice as high as in the rest of the country. At least 36 women and girls, including two ages 7 and 11, have been killed in Ciudad Ju?z and the city of Chihuahua since the beginning of 2004, according to information compiled by the Washington Office on Latin America from media and law enforcement reports. People who are probably innocent remain in prison for many of the killings, based on little more than confessions that they say were obtained under torture. Meanwhile, the authorities responsible for putting them there -- as well as those who committed the crimes -- walk free.

Ms. Morf?said reviews of cases like Mr. Garc?s had begun to uncover corruption and abuses at high levels, implicating the former state prosecutor, Jes?os?ol?Silva, and the former head of the state police, Vicente Gonz?z Garc?